Readme File for "Super Robot VX Remix" ==================================== Background ========== Super Robot is a game I played and enjoyed many years ago on a VAX computer running VMS. It was an ASCII character based game on the VAX. The game was written by an as yet unknown to me German person in VAX pascal. Gameplay ======== In the original game ,an arena is generated by randomly placed blocks and walls (made of hash '#' symbols) on the 80x24 screen. Robots live in this arena and they are represented by capital 'R's and you are repesented by an asterisk '*'. Numbers are also placed at random in the arena and if you move onto these you score points. There are also mines ('@' symbols) which kill anything stupid enough to move onto them. Some question marks ('?') also appear in the level - some give you points and some are mines. Finally, there is a golden hen ('h') which moves erratically around the arena avoiding you. If you can pick this up you get a large bonus score. Movement is turned-based. On each move you can either move 1 space in one of 4 directions (North, South, East or West) OR fire in one of 4 directions. Your shot will destroy the 1st thing it hits (except walls and blocks) and then stop. After you move or fire, each robot will then either fire or move one space. The golden hen will move 2 spaces (if it is still alive!). The robots are pretty single-minded and a bit stupid - they will naturally move towards you unless they think they have a shot i.e. you are on the same line or column as they are. Each robot will ignore anything between you and it - so they will fire at you and possibly hit another robot or a mine in the way (or of course a point scoring number or the golden hen) and destroy it. Their keenness to track you down can be manipulated so that you can manoeveur them onto mines or into situations were they will shoot each other. If you shoot a robot (which is easier to do) it may or may not be replaced by 1 (or more!) robots. I was never able to ascertain what the rules were for this. The trick was to make the robots kill each other while collecting points. You only have 1 life - 1 hit and its game over and your score goes to zero. When you defeat all of the robots the level finishes - you are deemed successful only if you collect a certain percentage of available points. I can't remember if the value of the golden hen counted towards possible points and am also hazy as to the target percentage required to progress. If you fail to collect the target number of points, you restart the level again (your score is not reset to zero). If you do collect the target , you move onto a more challenging level. Levels are described as classes in Super Robot. You start at Beginner and move up though Good and Expert. At the expert level, super robots appear ('R's) and can fire at you diagonally. You could, I suppose, call this game the thinking man's Berzerk! This was a very addictive little game and I have decided to remake it for the PC using the game-programming language BlitzPlus. It is my 1st BlitzPlus project and my limited knowledge in programming action-based games is another reason why I chose this! The Remake ========== I have decided to keep the gameplay as close to the original as possible - filling in gaps in my memory and knowledge (since the source of the original so far is unavailable). It is still a turn-based game and has all of the gameplay features mentioned above. I have of course improved the graphics using bitmaps for the robots, hero, mines etc. and have even added a little bit of animation onto the robots. I hope you enjoy it, and , if you are the author of the original - contact me and perhaps I can make this remake more faithful to the original!! There is a Hall of Fame which holds the best 5 scores. You Must complete the game to be able to register a score. Do you see the tribute to a great retrogaming web-site in the hall of fame when you 1st play the game? Controls ======== Move using the cursor keys. W=fire up, A=fire left, S=fire right, Z=fire down. Press ESC to quit. David Kelly, March 2005. davy.kelly@ntlworld.com Update (24th March, 2005) ====== I have implemented a level editor - you can easily create up to 1000 custom levels. I have not implemented the question marks in custom levels yet but everything else is available. I would like to improve gameplay by introducing new elements into an enhanced mode such as :- * shields - could be picked up by you (or the robots) that would enable you to take a hit without losing a life * decoys - would attract the robots away from you for a limited time. I hope to also allow customisation or tweaking of the "engine" rules - more details on this will appear in the next release. Update (11th July, 2005) ====== Have been neglecting this for some time now.Back to it! When creating custom levels you may now place shield icons in the level. These can be picked up (by the hero and the robots - but the robots will only stumble into them by accident) and are good for 1 hit. You (and the robots) can also walk onto and destroy a mine when shielded. You can pick up as many shields as you want. The super robots cannot use the shields and will destroy them if they walk onto them. This change moves the game toward being more of a puzzle type game and I hope to include a nice challenging set of custom levels in the next release . Update (25th Feb, 2006) ====== Stil neglecting this - but I've fixed a couple of little bugs: Restart of custom levels was not resetting the shield level of the hero. The target score was appearing in CLASSIC mode after playing a custom level with "target score display" activated 2nd Update (25th Feb, 2006) =========================== Found big bug in supposed fix for instant death on respawn! Fixed in v1.22 beta 3rd Update (22nd Feb, 2013) =========================== Fixed bug that was affecting level select screen (up and down cursor keys moving very slowly) Fixed in v1.23 beta 4th Update (29th Jan, 2014) =========================== Set to run in windowed mode to retain original screen ratio of 800x600. Tidied up some text messages in the instruction screen and edit menu that somehow got messed up. Removed test level from custom level pack and added spiral level - not game tested - this one might be impossible(!) :)